Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Did you find the Queen?

If anybody took the trouble to search for the lovely Queen last week, you may have found her posted on the outside of Dwight. As was highlighted by the picture of the bird displayed recently, Mount Holyoke College was designed to imitate gothic architecture which often carried heavy reference to God, spirituality, and royalty. This was not out of character for Mount Holyoke in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the book 100 Years of Mount Holyoke College is is stated that Mary Lyon used to declare an annual school wide fast for a day, in order to do penance and hope for the future Christianization of the world. This tradition obviously did not have as much continuity as Mountain Day did.

While Dwight today is the well known location of the Weissman Center for Leadership, the Miller Worley Center for the Environment, and the McCulloch Center for global initiatives, in the past it has been used as classroom space, a dorm building, and most recently an art building until our current art building was built in 1971. Its imitation of a gothic castle makes it one of the most recognizable buildings on campus from afar, but zoomed in it has been demonstrated that there are still many details which students may neglect to notice as they rush from one class to the next.

One major detail that no student should neglect is the "million dollar tree" in between Dwight and the Library. In recent years, the school planned to create an addition which connected the two buildings. Originally it was proposed that the addition would require knocking down this massive tree which greets the north end of campus and has no doubt silently witnessed the entire history of the college. Students and alumni were enraged at the idea of knocking it down, and raised enough money to save the tree by diverting the connecting alcove.

As one last scavenger hunt exercise before it gets too chilly, try and see if you can find the location of these crests, which give tribute to our sister schools.